No one will confuse me for an Obama fan or someone who puts much stock in Obama’s “hope and unity” routine, but I have to second Sullivan’s amazement at this remark:

I don’t see any problem with Barack Obama admitting that part of his appeal is the hope that he might help mend the racial divide and turn a new page. But he could also say that he’s not running for the President of Black America but of all America and that his qualifications involve more than his skin color. He’s more than eloquent enough to make that case.

It does defy belief that anyone even remotely familiar with Obama doesn’t know that he says this sort of thing all the time (indeed, he says it almost ad nauseam as far as I’m concerned).  This was only the central theme of the DNC speech in 2004 that raised him to national prominence, and it has been repeated time and again in his victory speeches over the past two months from Iowa until Wisconsin.  For instance, he said in South Carolina:

The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.

It’s about the past versus the future.

His oft-repeated lines, of course, derive from the original speech:

Well, I say to them tonight, there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America.

And again:

There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

It’s not as if the campaign started just a few months ago.  This is the elementary, superficial stuff that I assumed everyone knew about Obama–I thought this sort of rhetoric was the reason why more than a few conservative pundits have been so impressed with Obama.  For some of them, though, it’s as if he just appeared on the scene.

Update: Goldberg has clarified his remark to some extent.